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Aldred Thorne
Appearance Aldred possesses rugged yet noble good looks despite moving into his autumn years and has a tall, well-muscled body thanks to his many decades of swordsmanship. He stands at approximately five foot twelve. His rough voice holds a stern tone but has an underlying note of compassion in it. The Lord of the Watch has not escaped his years, however. He walks with a bad limp on his left side due to an attack he endured several years ago and moves around with the help of a cane. His lank hair was once black but is now fading to grey and his good looks are tarnished by dark rings under his eyes caused by fatigue due to overworking. His attire commonly consists of black cotton clothing covered with plain leather armour, decorated with a small patch on the right shoulder side of the chest showing House Thorne’s crest (a seated, large eyed owl on a quartered dark red and blue field). Personality Aldred is a practical man; he has little time for the pomp and protocol of political life. However, it is this very factor of his personality which many people believe make him the best man suited for the job of Lord of the Watch (the person in charge of Markham's military/police and foreign patrols) and Keeper of the Eastern and Southern Paths (important trade routes from cities next to the sea and commonly under attack by bandits). He does not let the idea of political repercussions stall his actions, a quirk that often draws the ire of his companions on the Council. He likes to get hands on with tasks, despising the idea of getting someone to do his work for him resulting in him lacking necessary sleep, which fuels his occasional snappy outbursts and short temperament. He is renowned in his native home of Markham for his tough but fair attitude to all members of society, from commoner to nobles or mages to templars. With his campaign against the corruption in the Templar Order several years ago, many rumours abound that Aldred is a mage sympathizer, rumours aided by the fact he is good friends with the Markham First Enchanter and that he shares an animosity with Markham's Knight-Commander. Aldred is a stern man, taking his duty to Markham's citizens extremely seriously. He likes to keep an eye on all threats to his home, whether they are external or internal. He is also notoriously impossible to coerce onto a single side in a debate, refusing to be anything but fair to both sides of a conflict so that he can come up with a suitable compromise. People commonly come to him to resolve their differences as a result. At the end of the day Aldred Thorne is a decent man, loyal to his family, friends and the city-state he helps run. Biography Aldred was born the third child of a nobleman of Markham, a city-state in the Free Marches. His mother died shortly after he was born to a strange wasting sickness that the doctors and mages could not seemed to heal. His father blamed him for this and neglected the boy out of spite, spending all his time and efforts on his elder siblings. He had little chance of ever inheriting his father’s estate, since the two children who came before him (twin boy and girl) where highly sheltered and unlikely to perish in time for Aldred to take up the mantle of the head of House Thorne. He preferred it this anyway since it drew his father away from him and spent most of his time carousing and having a general good time (fathering three bastards to three different women in the process). When he hit twenty six however, his sister passed away to a sickness that was very similar to their mother’s and his father wanted him to learn the family position of Lord of the Watch on the Markham Council in case something happened to his elder brother. Two years later, after a long battle with the sickness, his older brother died too leaving Aldred the only heir to the Thorne household position. To his surprise (and his father’s), he took to learning the skills and leadership skills to lead men very quickly and proved very popular amongst the men of the Watch and the general populace, although his blunt attitude often led to him butting heads with many nobles. After two years as a captain, his father promoted him to Keeper of the Southern Path (one of the main trade routes), giving him the experience he needed in directing patrols outside the city. It was during this time that the troubles with the Templars began. Rumours began that they were badly abusing the mages in their care, but such was the embellishment of the tales that many ignored them. Aldred was not one of them however and his time as a Watch Captain had made him grow to despise those who abused people after seeing the terrible things others do to each other. He launched his own investigation into the claims but it was quickly shut down when the Knight-Commander complained to the other’s on the Council and his father closed the case. This caused great tension between father and son, but shortly after the old man passed away, leaving the ancestral sword and position of Lord of the Watch to his son. With the new powers his position granted him, Aldred re-opened the case and dug deeply into the workings Templar Order. It was not long before he gathered the evidence he needed to prove that the corruption in the Order went all the way to the top to the Knight-Commander, who had several mages under his direct ‘observation’. After several raids on the homes of the corrupt Templars, the Lord of the Watch himself lead the squad assigned to the Knight-Commander’s arrest in the Templar Headquarters. However, rather than face his shame and go to prison, the Knight-Commander leaped from the balcony of his quarters and died on the cobbled streets below. After all this had been wrapped up, Aldred was personally thanked by Markham’s First Enchanter for his efforts to protect the mages and gained much respect from the other Councilmen. They did, however, vote to bury the truth of things to prevent any possible military recrimination from the Chantry. Aldred was the only one to vote no on this particular issue, but bitterly accepted that he had been outvoted. Not long after the next Knight-Commander was chosen (who happened to be the previous one’s daughter) an attempt was made on the life of the Lord of the Watch. He and two of his men were ambushed on a regular patrol that Aldred was overseeing. The two Watchmen died quickly but he was made of tougher stuff. Still, when the dust settled he had been badly injured with a sword almost severing his leg. His unconscious body was found by a relief patrol and sent quickly to the First Enchanter herself for healing. Despite her best work the leg could not be fully healed and Aldred remained crippled, having to use a cane for the rest of his life. During the next Council meeting, the new Knight-Commander seemed very surprised and angry to see him. Although he was perturbed that he could no longer wield a sword with the same skill he used to be able to, he learned instead of a method to use his cane in self-defence, using his opponent’s strength and momentum against them before striking. He also had a special cane made that had a dagger hidden inside it in case he found himself in desperate need of a piercing weapon. Several years later, Aldred heard of tensions growing in Kirkwall between the Templars and mages in a similar way as it did in his city, only on a larger scale. He set out immediately to see what he could do to help diffuse the situation, leaving his Second-In-Command in charge of his affairs in Markham and travelled to the larger city, where he had an estate he would stay at whilst he observed the situation. Timeline Relationships Category:Character Index Category:Original Characters Category:Marchers Category:Nobility